The present invention relates to an electronic device such as a portable telephone which permits the use of the electronic device when an authentic user identification card on which personal information of the holder (subscriber) is recorded, and a unique information management method.
In recent years, people often carry cards such as credit cards on which personal information is recorded. Along with this, crimes of illicit copy and misuse of cards without any permission of authentic holders are increasing. In the field of electronic devices such as portable telephones, there is recently proposed a system of enabling communication by mounting a user identification card called a SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) card on a telephone main body. The SIM card on which personal information of the holder is recorded is always inserted into a telephone, and the telephone is turned on/off in accordance with whether the telephone is used or not.
Even if the user does not own a telephone, or the user cannot use his/her own telephone because of a dead battery or the like, the user can make speech communication using his/her own ID code by inserting his/her SIM card into the telephone of another person or a public telephone. In this case, charging processing can target the holder of the SIM card. Using a telephone owned by another person, the cardholder can make a call by one-touch operation on the basis of memory dial data stored in the SIM card.
Even such a convenient user identification card such as a SIM card may be illicitly copied and misused without any permission of the authentic holder, similar to a credit card. If the user identification card is lost, the authentic holder notifies the loss or theft of the card. However, if the card is returned after being removed from an electronic device and copied without any permission of the holder, the holder cannot recognize illicit copy of the card.
For this reason, the conventional system suffers the problem that an electronic device such as a portable telephone is misused to charge the card holder owing to the malicious intent of another person who illicitly copied the user identification card. The personal information of the authentic holder is read from the user identification card and leaks out.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an electronic device for preventing illicit copy of a user identification card or leakage of personal information recorded on a user identification card, and a unique information management method.
To achieve the above object, according to the present invention, there is provided an electronic device comprising a device main body whose use is permitted by inserting an authentic user identification card on which personal information of a holder is recorded, card control means for detecting removal/insertion of the user identification card from/into the device main body during a power-off state, and device control means for displaying a warning representing removal/insertion of the card on the basis of a detection result of the card control means in power-on operation.